CEACAM5 and neoplasm: While CEA had long been accepted to be the most important serum tumor biomarker of CRC, the results of multivariate analyses indicated that the prognostic prediction ability of serum basophil level was not be covered up by CEA level and other clinicopathological factors, in both OS and DFS, meaning that the two serum variables could be grouped for a better clinical application with the aforementioned definition of basophils count < 0.025*109/L as B−, basophils count ≥ 0.025*109/L as B+, elevated serum CEA (> 5.2 ng/mL) as CEA + , and normal serum CEA (≤ 5.2 ng/mL) as CEA−.